Translations, adaptations or rewritings?
English versions of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni
This paper analyses the various English translations of Da Ponte and Mozart’s Don
Giovanni, with an aim at showing that each version tends to adapt the social, cultural and sexual
contexts of the opera. From Natalia Macfarren’s Victorian translation of the 1870s to Jeremy Sams’ modern version
currently in use at the English National Opera, via Edward Dent’s sprightly text written in the 1930s for the London
lower middle classes, Ruth and Thomas Martin’s version meant for a conservative American public and W. H. Auden’s most
poetical reinterpretation, all versions resort to strategies aimed at drawing on the new receiver’s culture. Whatever
their own specificities, all versions tend to reduce the strangeness and otherness of the original text, offering
their own interpretations of Mozart and Da Ponte’s universal masterpiece.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Natalia Macfarren’s Victorian translation (1871)
- 3.Edward J. Dent’s translation for London suburban audiences (1921, 1938)
- 4.Ruth and Thomas Martin’s middle-class translation (1950)
- 5.W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s poetical translation (1961)
- 6.The ENO pedestrian versions (Norma Platt and Laura Sarti, Amanda and Anthony Holden, Jeremy Sams)
- 7.Concluding remarks
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Notes
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References